In the distance, I could see a stone wall running along the edge of the grounds, topped by wrought iron. Very pretty, but not difficult to climb over. This was Trey’s peeviest peeve—security features that weren’t actually secure. The property was lovely and yet empty, as soulless as the stark white house. First a homicide, then three seasons of commercial debauchery, and now a shooting. Well, an alleged shooting.
“Any initial impressions?” I said.
Trey didn’t look up from his notebook. “Not yet.”
As I watched, he walked the perimeter, downloading the blueprint into his brain. The grounds occupied about two acres, half of which were paved and turfed, the rest thick with slender trees.
“Be careful not to disturb anything,” he said.
Of course things had already been disturbed—the film crew had tromped around collecting the last of their equipment and apparently every scrap of outdoor furniture—but Trey was working with what he had. He still had a sniper’s eye for distance and didn’t do any actual measuring. Beyond the border wall I could hear distant traffic, muffled and muted.
“Tai? Would you stand at the edge of the pool? Right beside the diving board?”
Where Nick had been standing when he’d heard the shot. I did as Trey asked. “Are you onto something?”
“Perhaps. Face south, please.”
I turned. The sky glowed peachy warm over the trees in front of me, deepening to golden orange to my right. The barn-like guest house lay behind me, the patio to my left. I could see the interior of the living room where Quint had been that night, organizing the paperwork. I could imagine him in that room of glass, like a shark in a fishbowl. Trey turned in a slow circle, one full revolution, then walked behind the guest house where he disappeared from view.
My phone rang, startling me. And then I remembered. I closed my eyes. Oh no.
I answered it and started spilling apologies. “Oh God, Rico, I’m sorry. I completely…we were supposed to have drinks.”
“I am having drinks. Where are you?”
He didn’t sound annoyed, just disappointed. I was too. Back in high school, we’d been inseparable. Now he ran with a crowd of writers and actors and poets, mostly black like him, edgy and creative and fierce. Not a single one of them wanted anything to do with suburban Civil War reenactors Outside The Perimeter.
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but I am in the Buckwild in Buckhead house pretending to be the target of an assassination attempt.”
Silence. “Do I even want to know?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Your usual kind of complicated?”
“Yes and no.”
Trey reappeared underneath a tree at the corner of the property, a fully leafed oak much older than the saplings around it, probably preserved during the original development. He knelt and examined the base, prodding the dead leaves and grasses underneath with his pencil.
Rico sighed. “A’right. Raincheck then.” He delivered a calculated pause. “But Dante was looking forward to meeting you.”
“Dante?”
“Yeah.” Another pause. “My guy.”
“You have a guy? You never tell me anything anymore.”
“I was trying to! But you decided you’d rather be doing whatever you’re doing.”
Trey rose and took two steps in my direction and held an index finger in front of his face. Sighting the target. I could feel the imaginary crosshairs on me, and a delicate shudder ran up my backbone.
“I am so sorry. Tell Dante I owe him a drink.”
“Yeah. And you tell Trey I’m sorry he’s stuck keeping you out of trouble again.”
I started to explain that wasn’t exactly what was going on, but Rico had already hung up. I listened to the dead air for a second, then sat on the diving board, chin in hand.
“You finding anything out there?” I called.
Trey pointed to the tree. “This is the only concealment available that has a clear sightline to the patio. Any reasonably trained shooter would set up here.”
“So you’re standing on the shooter’s location?”
“Alleged shooter. And I don’t know. I didn’t find shell casings or any other evidence that a shooting took place. But…”
“But?”
“If I were called here to target someone in that house, this is where I would set up.”
I saw his reasoning. The other landscaping features and the guest house created a wall around the cloistered pool area. The shot wouldn’t have been difficult distance-wise—even a handgun would have been adequate—but it would have required patience.
Trey started walking toward me. “At first I was puzzled why Talbot would have been targeted while he was still in shadow. But if the setup site was here, the shooter would have had to take the shot before Talbot reached the edge of the pool. The guest house would block the sight line before, the cabana after.”
I could see what he was talking about. Nick had come out the French doors, cigarette still unlit. He would have been silhouetted against the bright living room, not yet illuminated in the watery blue glow of the pool lights. It would have been a tricky shot, but entirely possible the second he stopped walking.
“So they took one shot and missed,” I said. “Why didn’t they shoot again?”
Trey examined the pool. “I don’t know.”
I knew some things about single bullets. It was the sniper’s creed: one shot, one kill. Only this shot hadn’t killed, it had missed. And the shooter had not fired another one.
“The shooter was interrupted,” I said. “Or spotted. Or in danger of being interrupted and or spotted.”
“Possibly.”
“Which would mean there’s a witness somewhere, if that’s the case.”
Trey nodded in acknowledgment. He was listening, but his mind remained focused on his surroundings. “If the shooter was standing under the tree, and if Nick was standing beside the diving board, then the bullet had to go…there.”
He pointed toward the bank of windows gleaming in the sunlight. Unbroken. Not a shard out of place.
“Your theory has a problem,” I
